1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates generally to image filling methods, and, more particularly to image filling methods using epipolar geometry relationships between images in different capturing angles.
2. Description of the Related Art
Target objects or scenes, such as buildings, historic monuments, large-scale landscapes and devices, may be obstructed by unwanted objects during image capture thereof, resulting in incomplete images. Some obstructions may be automatically removed, such as vehicles or pedestrians, while others, such as signboards, signs, trees or other buildings, cannot. In this case, no complete image of a target object can be obtained even if images of the target object are captured from various angles. The unwanted obstructions can create considerable interference in digital image preservation and 3D model construction for historic monuments and buildings.
Manuel M. Oliverira proposed an inpainting algorithm in 2001. Alexandru Telea proposed a fast marching method (FMM) in 2004. These proposed methods are used for quickly patching loss or destruction of small area targets within an image. In these methods, the time for image inpainting with small area targets can be reduced. However, blur may be generated for images including large area targets.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,987,520 discloses an exemplar-based method integrating image inpainting and texture synthesis. In this method, an image is inpainted according to direction and intensity of image edges, and reliability of pixels. During image inpainting, the inpainting is progressive from known image areas adjacent to a target area. The accuracy of image inpainting is higher if the variation of image texture is regular. Since the image inpainting is still based on other areas of image, the result may be also undesirable.